PREFACE.
Table of Contents
The fable of the existence of a mysterious plant-animal variously entitled The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, The Scythian Lamb, and The Barometz, or Borametz, is one of the curious myths of the Middle Ages with which I have been long acquainted. Until the year 1883, not having given serious thought to it, or made it a subject of critical examination, I had been content to accept as correct the explanation of it now universally adopted; namely, that it originated from certain little lamb-like toy figures ingeniously constructed by the Chinese from the rhizome and frond-stems of a tree-fern, which, from its identification with the object of the fable, has received the name of Dicksonia Barometz. But during my researches in the works of ancient writers when preparing the manuscript of my two books, Sea Monsters Unmasked, and Sea Fables Explained, I came upon passages of old authors which convinced me that these toy lambs made from ferns by the Chinese had no more connexion with the story of The Vegetable Lamb than the artificial mermaids so cleverly constructed by the Japanese were the cause and origin of the ancient and world-wide belief in mermaids. Subsequent investigations have confirmed this opinion.
I have found that all of these old myths which I have been able to trace to their source have originated in a perfectly true statement of some curious and interesting fact; which statement has been so garbled and distorted, so misrepresented and perverted in repetition by numerous writers, that in the course of centuries its original meaning has been lost, and a monstrous fiction has been substituted for it. Truth lies at the bottom of a well, says the adage; and in searching for the origin of these old myths and legends, the deeper we can dive down into the past the greater is the probability of our discovering the truth concerning them. To obtain a clue to the identity of The Scythian Lamb we must consult the pages of historians and philosophers who lived and wrote from eighteen to sixteen centuries before Sir John Mandeville published his version of the story; and, having there found set before us the real Vegetable Lamb in all its truthful simplicity and beauty, we shall be able to recognise its form and features under the various disguises it was made to assume by the wonder-mongers of the Middle Ages.
I venture to believe that the reader who will kindly follow my argument (p. 42, et seq.) will agree with me that the rumour which spread from Western Asia all over Europe, and was a subject of discussion by learned men during many centuries, of the existence of a tree bearing fruit, or seed-pods, which when they ripened and burst open were seen to contain little lambs, of whose soft white fleeces Eastern people wove material for their clothing, was a plant of far higher importance to mankind than the paltry toy animals made by the Chinese from the root of a fern, of which gew-gaws only four specimens are known to have been brought to this country. It seems to me clear and indisputable that the rumour referred to the cotton-pod, and originated in the first introduction of cotton and the fabrics woven from it into Eastern Europe.
It will be seen that the explanation of the process by which the truthful report of a remarkable fact was in time perverted into the detailed history of an absurd fiction is very easy and intelligible.
As this little book was originally intended for publication, like its predecessors before-mentioned, as a hand-book in connection with the Literary Department of the South Kensington Exhibitions, I have treated in a separate chapter of the history of cotton, its use by ancient races in Asia, Africa, and America, and its gradual introduction amongst the nations of Europe. The various stages of its progress Westward were so distinctly and intimately dependent on many remarkable events in the worlds history, by which its advance was alternately retarded and facilitated, that the annals of the vegetable wool which holds so important a place amongst the manufacturing industries of Great Britain are hardly less romantic than the fable of The Vegetable Lamb, which was its forerunner.
Henry Lee.
Savage Club.
May, 1887.
THE
VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY
A CURIOUS FABLE OF THE
COTTON PLANT.
CHAPTER I.
THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.
Table of Contents
Amongst the curious myths of the Middle Ages none were more extravagant and persistent than that of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, known also as the Scythian Lamb, and the Borametz, or Barometz, the latter title being derived from a Tartar word signifying a lamb. This lamb was described as being at the same time both a true animal and a living plant. According to some writers this composite plant-animal was the fruit of a tree which sprang from a seed like that of a melon, or gourd; and when the fruit or seed-pod of this tree was fully ripe it burst open and disclosed to view within it a little lamb, perfect in form, and in every way resembling an ordinary lamb naturally born. This remarkable tree was supposed to grow in the territory of the Tartars of the East, formerly called Scythia; and it was said that from the fleeces of these tree-lambs, which were of surpassing whiteness, the natives of the country where they were found wove materials for their garments and head-dress. In the course of time another version of the story was circulated, in which the lamb was not described as being the fruit of a tree, but as being a living lamb attached by its navel to a short stem rooted in the earth. The stem, or stalk, on which the lamb was thus suspended above the ground was sufficiently flexible to allow the animal to bend downward, and browze on the herbage within its reach. When all the grass within the length of its tether had been consumed the stem withered and the lamb died. This plant-lamb was reported to have bones, blood, and delicate flesh, and to be a favourite food of wolves, though no other carnivorous animal would attack it. Many other details were given concerning it, which will be found mentioned in the following pages. This legend met with almost universal credence from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and, even then, only gave place to an explanation of it as absurd and delusive as itself. Following the outline sketched in the preface, I shall, in this chapter, lay before the reader the story of the Barometz or Vegetable Lamb, as related by various writers, and shall then give my reasons for assigning to the fable an interpretation very different from that which has been hitherto accepted as the true one.
The story of a wonderful plant which bore living lambs for its fruit, and grew in Tartary, seems to have been first brought into public notice in England in the reign of Edward III., by Sir John Mandeville, the Knyght of Ingelond that was y bore in the toun of Seynt Albans, and travelide aboute in the worlde in many diverse countreis, to se mervailes and customes of countreis, and diversiteis of folkys, and diverse shap of men and of beistis. In the 26th chapter of the book in which he wrot and telleth all the mervaile that he say, and which he dedicated to the King, he treats of the Countreis and Yles that ben beond the Lond of Cathay, and of the Frutes there; and amongst the curiosities he met with in the dominions of the Cham of Tartary he mentions the following :
